


Attack on Mindoir

by OpalizedBone



Series: Zora Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Background stories, Canon Compliant, Canon Expansion, Canon-Typical Violence, Colonist (Mass Effect), F/F, Gen, Gun Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Heavy Angst, Mass Death, Mass Murder, Massacre, Mindoir, Paragon Shepard (Mass Effect), Parent Death, Pre-Canon, The Attack on Mindoir, Violent, War, War Hero (Mass Effect), War is hell, gun death, how shepard survived mindoir, skyllian blitz, slavers attack on mindoir, y'all there is a lot of death in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 05:21:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16340564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpalizedBone/pseuds/OpalizedBone
Summary: “What’s your name?” one nurse asked the first day. She was nice; Zora remembered her eyes were the same warm brown of her mother’s.Her mind flashed to her mom and dad screaming her name, the last thing they’d ever say. Her stomach flipped, and she lurched to the side of the bed to vomit into the bedpan. The nurse patted her back soothingly; she later learned her name was Rodriguez.She couldn’t bear to say her first name, not so soon after her parents had screamed it with their dying breath.“Shepard,” she mumbled, wiping her mouth. “My name is Shepard.”~part one of a very self-indulgent series featuring my Zora Shepard; her background as a colonist and the Skyllian Blitz, how she fell in love with Liara, how she vowed to stay true to herself even in the face of war, how she brought her crew through hell and came out swinging.Basically a lot of canon expansion with my spin on it! :D This one focuses on the slavers' attack on Mindoir and how Shepard survived, so it's quite violent and features a lot of death





	Attack on Mindoir

Zora Shepard’s Alliance folder didn’t go into detail about much of her life before the Skyllian Blitz. She’d been only 22 at the time, untested, simply another soldier. Her efforts to save Elysium were what first got her noticed by the brass, were what eventually led to her rising through the ranks to the title of Commander. Many people assumed she’d just been doing her job, or had gotten lucky. Those people didn’t know what she’d been through on Mindoir, didn’t know what it felt to see a parent die right in front of them, didn’t know the reason she fought so hard on Elysium was that she couldn’t bear to see the colony fall as Mindoir had.

 

Mindoir was  _ hell. _ Shepard had only been 16 when the raiders attacked, when her life had been ripped to pieces. She could remember it as if it was yesterday, despite it being 13 years prior. She’d still gone by her first name then, and her hair was long, falling to the middle of her back. It was the last time either of those things were true.

 

She’d been out with friends when the first attack hit. 

 

“And then Harrison--” Zora was retelling some stupid story from school to her friends when gunfire split the air. She’d flinched, dove for the ground; it was loud, earsplitting rounds echoing through the small colony, and she’d acted on instinct. Looking up, she saw her friends had done the same, and now they cowered on the ground, under a flimsy table outside a cafe.

 

More gunfire, closer then, and some of her friends had screamed; she didn’t blame them anymore, but at the time she shushed them harshly, knowing they might give their location away. She’d been casually dating one of them, a girl named Delize, and she looked at her, seeing the agonizing fear in her dark eyes.

 

“Listen,” Zora hissed, and her friends latched onto her voice, listening intently. She’d always been the unofficial leader of their group; she had an air of authority to her, even at the tender age of 16, and her friends looked to her for guidance in everything from where to eat lunch to what to do in an active shooter situation. Delize scooted closer to her, seeking reassurance.

 

“What’s going on?” one of her friends asked. Zora shook her head, carefully getting to one knee.

 

“I don’t know,” Zora whispered. “We’re under attack.”   
  


“Who’d attack Mindoir?” someone else whisper-shouted, fear in his eyes. “Why?”

 

“I don’t know!” Zora replied, terror making her voice raspy and wobbly, not the dry snap she’d been aiming for. “We need to get somewhere safe.”

 

“I want to go home,” someone whispered, and there were tears in her eyes. Looking around, Zora saw those same tears in nearly everyone’s eyes, the raw, visceral terror seeking some escape. Her own eyes were dry.

 

“We have to split up,” Delize said. “It’ll be easier to not get all of us.”

 

“She’s right,” Zora murmured. “We have to get out of here.”

 

“Where do we go?” another person asked.

 

“I don’t know,” Zora replied, frustrated and scared. “Just…”

 

“Shh!” someone else said suddenly; they all froze. Footsteps were getting closer, nearly upon them.

 

Zora pushed her friends further under the table, trying to shield them as much as she could. A group of men armed with assault rifles rounded the corner, and her head whipped up, staring them down. She learned later they were batarian slavers, but she hadn’t noticed at the time; she’d been too busy staring at their guns.

 

“Get up!” one of them yelled. She stared, unable to move, and one of the others pointed his gun at her.

 

“Get. Up,” he growled. Slowly, she stood, walking away from her friends with her hands up. The man kept his gun aimed on her, and the others turned their attention to her friends.

 

“You too,” one growled. Her friends didn’t move. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Delize start to cry. Her heart lurched.

 

“Listen to them,” Zora couldn’t help but say. The person with his gun aimed on her tightened his finger on the trigger.

 

“Shut up,” he snarled. She swallowed. Her friends began to move, slowly--too slowly. One of the men fired a warning round into the sidewalk, and her friends screamed. She flinched, eyes clenching shut, then opened them to see her friends all standing, hands up.

 

“Let’s go,” one of the attackers said, and they marched through the colony to the main square. Zora was in the back, and a gun kept poking her between the shoulder blades. Her throat was dry.

 

When they made it to the main square, Zora’s knees nearly buckled. Almost the entire colony was there, split into two groups. There were piles of what looked like bodies on the edge of the square, and Zora felt sick to her stomach. It took a moment of searching before she realized the colony had been split up by age; those younger than perhaps forty were grouped near one side of the square, armed by more people with assault rifles, and the older group was on the other side. They were all standing stock-still, their arms bound behind their backs with tough plastic handcuffs.

 

They were herded towards the younger group. Along the way, Zora’s boot slipped on something wet and squishy, and she went down. She caught herself on her hands, and they splashed in a pile of slippery flesh. Her stomach churned, and she nearly vomited.

 

One of the attackers grabbed her by her long hair, yanking her to her feet, and she cried out in pain. Keeping a cruel grip against her scalp, he marched her towards the group.

 

“Zora!” she heard her name, and looked around wildly. It was her mother, who was on the edge of the older group. She saw her father try to hush her, and one of the armed men shoved a gun in her face. Zora’s heart clenched, and she did her best to plead with her eyes, to make her mom understand that she had to play along.

 

The man behind her yanked her hair, forcing her head straight, and shoved her towards the young group. A pair of handcuffs snapped around her wrists before he finally let go, shoving her hard. She went down on her knees, jarring her back, and struggled to rise. When she stood up, she looked around. A few of the attackers, batarians, were talking quietly amongst themselves, and she saw one give a decisive nod.

 

Stepping back, he yelled something her translator couldn’t pick up. The men started rounding up the younger crowd, separating them into smaller groups and marching them off to where she could see a ship parked just outside the colony. They were taking them away--her stomach flipped as she finally put two and two together and realized they were slavers.

 

“Oh, no,” Zora whispered, eyes wide. They’d separated them by age--she’d studied that in school. Only the young people had a purpose to slavers. The older ones were a liability.

 

A second later, and gunfire rang out. The slavers fired into the older crowd. Screams split the air, echoing off buildings, and people dropped like stones. Zora made eye contact with her parents.

 

“Zora!” her mother screamed.

 

“Mom! Dad!” Zora screeched, unable to help herself. A guard shoved a gun in her side, but she didn’t care.

 

“Zora! No!” her dad shouted--she thought he did; she couldn’t hear him over the screams of dying men and women.

 

“Get back in line!” the slaver next to her yelled; she barely heard him.

 

“No!” Zora cried out, watching as if in slow-motion as her parents fell. Their blood spurted, wetting the pavement. Zora stepped forward, screaming wordlessly, and the slaver grabbed her hair and yanked her back. She fought blindlessly, viciously, and suddenly a sharp, burning pain exploded in her shoulder. She fell, crying out, and hit the ground hard. Her skull cracked against the pavement, and the world went dark.

 

When she opened her eyes, she saw the last of the prisoners shuffling out of the square, leaving her alone with piles upon piles of bodies. The slaver ship powered off, and she was alone. The stench of blood clung to her throat with every breath. Already she could see scavengers circling both in the air and around the corner of the square. Every breath sent agony through her shoulder, and she rolled over, managing to get onto her knees before she puked. Her head spun, white-hot pain radiating from her shoulder, and she barely managed to finish vomiting before she fell backwards. Dry heaves racked her frame for a few minutes longer.

 

It was another few minutes before the Alliance finally arrived. The soldiers swept through the colony, finding what little survivors there were and getting them ready to transport. She was dizzy and weak, unable to cry out, to tell them she was there, and it took them a long time to reach her. She watched as the soldiers made their way across the square, checking bodies for pulses, rolling them over to reach those trapped underneath. She couldn’t see their faces, didn’t know how they reacted to the carnage.

 

“Hey! This one’s still alive!” a soldier shouted, and suddenly she was surrounded, paramedics pressing medi-gel to her shoulder, someone cutting the plastic cuffs from her wrists. She was wrapped in a thick blanket and carefully lifted onto a stretcher, taken to a ship. 

 

She couldn’t remember exactly what happened, slipping in and out of consciousness. It was two days later, waking up in a hospital with a foster agent, a security guard, and a trauma therapist gathered around her bed that she learned exactly how it ended up happening.

 

The slavers had attacked from the Terminus Systems. Most of the colony had been taken, including Delize and her friends. Those older than forty had all been slaughtered. She’d barely survived--the doctors theorized she’d put up a weak barrier, the first manifestation of her biotics. 

 

“What’s your name?” one nurse asked the first day. She was nice; Zora remembered her eyes were the same warm brown of her mother’s.

 

Her mind flashed to her mom and dad screaming her name, the last thing they’d ever say. Her stomach flipped, and she lurched to the side of the bed to vomit into the bedpan. The nurse patted her back soothingly; she later learned her name was Rodriguez.

 

She couldn’t bear to say her first name, not so soon after her parents had screamed it with their dying breath.

 

“Shepard,” she mumbled, wiping her mouth. “My name is Shepard.”

 

The nurses all caught on quickly. Nobody called her Zora after that day.

 

Shepard cut off her hair after a few days in the hospital. She could still feel the slaver’s hand in her hair, the clenching fingers tight against her scalp, unable to get away. A friendly nurse helped her. It was the last time her hair was longer than a couple inches. Even now, 13 years later, she felt a surge of panic if she let it get any longer.

 

After Shepard got out of the hospital, she shuffled from foster home to foster home, too old to be considered for adoption. She went through therapy, learned coping mechanisms, ways to forget the nightmares and function in day-to-day life. She spent some time in a school for biotics, nothing near Jump Zero, just something to help her learn how to use it. 

 

Shepard enlisted in the military on her eighteenth birthday, tired of not having a purpose and wanting to make a difference. She wanted to help make the galaxy a better place, wanted to protect people from horrors like the slavers on Mindoir. This drive gave her the strength she needed to protect Elysium, to scrape together her wits and biotics and tech and hold the line until the backup arrived. Mindoir was hell, but it made Commander Shepard who she was.


End file.
